July 2015
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What Deregulated Law Schools Really Look Like (Michael Simkovic)
One of the key claims of critics of legal education in general, and of ABA-approved law schools in particular, is that accreditation requirements drive up the costs of legal education without improving quality. If only we could deregulate law schools and unleash the creative power of free market competition and the awesome technological potential of…
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What if colleges issued parents an itemized tuition bill?
An amusing idea from philosopher Erik Banks (Wright State).
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New Books in July
Authors and/or publishers kindly sent me these new books in July: Peirce by Albert Atkin (Routledge, 2016) [this is part of my Routledge Philosophers series] The Trolley Problem Mysteries by F.M. Kamm (Oxford University Press, 2015) (with replies by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Thomas Hurka, and Shelly Kagan). Music and Aesthetic Reality: Formalism and the Limits of…
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The Wall Street Journal’s Coverage of Law School Funded Jobs (Michael Simkovic)
The Wall Street Journal’s recent story about law-school funded jobs is a good example of the slant that has pervaded its law school coverage for the last several years. The general outline of the WSJ story is as follows: job outcomes for law school graduates have become so terrible that law schools are creating fake jobs…
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A dentist killed a lion…
…and the Internet swung into action.
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“Creating a password”
This is funny.
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Which countries send the most academics abroad?
According to this piece, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh are high on the list, though not, as far as I can tell, in philosophy, no doubt due to language barriers and the Anglo-centric parochialism of the field in the Anglophone countries.
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On the identity politics “left” in the U.S.
Another interestingly provocative e-mail from longtime reader S. Wallerstein, regarding the identity politics "left": They've been very successful at imposing their hegemony on the left, especially in the U.S., so that they are the only "queer" people, so that they are always victims and that of course coincides with the rise of neoliberalism and the…
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Student Loan Marriage Penalty (Michael Simkovic)
How should marriage affect legal determinations of ability to pay, and therefore obligation to pay? These are questions that tax scholars have long debated. Similar issues are now being debated in higher education circles because of the growth of income-based student loan repayment plans. In the context of Federal Income Taxation, marriage can either be…
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“Me” studies and philosophy’s problems
After the Kipnis fiasco several weeks ago, one in which, unfortunately, philosophers played a starring role, a law colleague asked me "Are all philosophers nuts?" Well, not all, but certainly plenty of them lack professional judgment, as we have had occasion to note before. Still, given the awful publicity for academic philosophy, one might hope that philosophers…
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Philosopher Burgis on why Hillary Clinton deserves the Republican nomination
It is a strong case, esp. the first four points.
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A chronology of the road to marriage equality for gay citizens
Interesting piece by Greenwald. The role of popular culture, especially television, was no doubt central to the quick change in public attitudes.
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Tweeting philosophers
Some entity called "TrueSciPhil" tweeted to me the following list of philosophers on Twitter based on their total followers. The total number of followers is a bit misleading, since it seems to be affected by how many other twitter users the philosopher follows (if you follow someone, they often follow you in return, or so it…
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Finkelstein comes out against BDS…
…and loses allies. Longtime readers will recall that he was denied tenure by the Administration at DePaul, after a smear campaign orchestrated by the disgraceful Alan Dershowitz. (Thanks to Walt Schaller for the pointer.)
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…